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Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Thinking, that's All: Beginnings and Ends

Much to my irritation, I unwillingly left yesterday's post unsettled and uncapped because I didn't have a cap with which to seal it.

Today, I do.

Aunt Flo showed up eight days late, unpacked her bags and didn't even appologize for not giving a courtesy call about being MIA for more than a week.

{If none of that makes sense to you, you'll most likely need to press rewind by one day.}

That arrival pretty much puts the brakes on thoughts of having a new arrival in nine or so months.

And I'm OK with it.

Yes, I'm OK that right now is not our new beginning with another new baby.

I most likely wouldn't have been OK with that yesterday morning.

But yesterday when I spilled my heart {and personal bodily affairs} all over my blog, I didn't know what I know now.

A tragedy occured late Monday night/early Tuesday morning, and it marked the end of a beautiful, young friend's time here on Earth.

Tragedy has an outstanding way of shrinking the smaller issues of life that previously seemed huge, untwisting emotions and then retwisting and braiding together new emotions.

What seemed so pressing and paramount -- my desire to simply know if our future was going to be richer by one more blessing at this space in this time -- quickly faded from a giant into a small counryside windmill.

Not that my feelings didn't matter anymore, rather the situation just looked so much more its actual size.

I've spent the day reeeling in my mother's heart, mourning the end of her time here on Earth, weeping for her family and for the loss in our community and church.

And I've spent the day grasping at small {and large} Truths.

Like Jesus' words in John 8: "I tell you the truth. If anyone keeps my word, he will never see death."

And the words of our young friend's friend, sharing how she would certainly be missed but how she also knew there was a party in Heaven now, welcoming our friend to her eternal home where her heart and soul would find itself in the most restful, beautiful, whole peace.

I've been trying to swallow these spoonfuls of perspective.

Yes, it's the end of her life here where we can see her, but it's actually the beginning of Eternity with her Creator.

And what really does that mean? I cannot even begin to imagine the glory or the beauty or the awe.

I wrestle, hard and long, like Jacob with his angel -- sometimes ends seem like only ends even though they are beginnings, too.

And these beginings disguised in only ends are beginnings that I cannot even begin to grasp or entirely see or understand for the life of me.

And sometimes, like now, with both the departure of hope for another new life and the departure of our friend's soul from Earth, sometimes I don't like these end-beginnings or beginning-ends or whatever they are.

I know however I want to word it that nothing erases the grief or sadness {in their very varied levels}.

But it certainly blurs my defintion so very drastically that I'm not sure I can figure out where it all actually does begin or end, and for some reason there's a surreal peace in simply just knowing that I don't have to know or understand or even like it.

Because He does.

He knows the beginning and the end and all of the mishmashed, mixed up, twisted and folded beginning-ends and end-beginnings.